Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (45 page)

I
n Kansas in 1917, “Doctor” (in the loosest sense of the word) John Romulus Brinkley began implanting goat testicles into impotent farmers, sexually frustrated housewives, and libidinously lax folks of all stripes. He parlayed this outlandish procedure into a long-term lavish lifestyle. And because of it, he became the wealthiest surgeon in the United States and went on to run—twice—for governor of Kansas (and nearly won!).

Despite being pursued and exposed as America's “most daring and dangerous” charlatan time and again over many years by his nemesis Dr. Morris Fishbein, who represented the American Medical Association, and despite directly causing many dozens of deaths due to ignorance and carelessness, Brinkley's fortunes rose to tremendous levels throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Brinkley will also go down in history as being responsible for introducing the United States at large to country and blues music, inadvertently plowing the ground for rock 'n' roll to flourish. And if that weren't enough, he used his massive “border blaster” radio station, operated just over the Rio Grande in Mexico, as a unique marketing tool for his own quack remedies, unwittingly becoming the father of the modern infomercial.

If ever there was a man whose life was one long slide into chicanery and intentional ill-treatment of others, it was that of John Romulus Brinkley. In his fifty-six years he was a bigamist, an evader of the law, a writer of bad checks, a prisoner, a buyer of false diplomas, and a practitioner of medicine without a license. But before all that he was a young man with much promise. . . .

Born in 1885 to John Brinkley and Sarah Burnett, herself the niece of his father's wife, John Romulus Brinkley showed signs early on of mental prowess, sharing a similar keen mind as his father, a medic in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. His father was also fond of the ladies, marrying and outliving four wives, as well as at least one out-of-wedlock paramour—young John's mother.

When John Romulus was five, his mother died of tuberculosis, and when he was ten, his father died, leaving John to be raised by his father's wife, the woman he came to call “Aunt Sally.” Despite the small family's long experience with financial hardship, young John was able to attend a one-room log school and thrived there. By the time he turned sixteen, he had gained all the schooling available to him. Though secretly yearning to study medicine and one day perhaps become a doctor, John accepted his lot and took on work as a letter carrier. In his spare time the industrious young man learned the craft of telegraphy, a skill that would prove useful in the years to come.

In 1906 John was twenty-one and living in New York, then New Jersey, working as a telegraph operator for various railroads. By the end of that year he had returned home to North Carolina to care for his beloved Aunt Sally, the woman who had raised him. Alas, she died on Christmas Day, 1906. His grief was assuaged, however, by the amorous ministrations of an old school chum, Sally Wilke, one year his senior. They soon married, and here's where Brinkley came into his own, at least according to public record, as a classic huckster.

The newlyweds traveled the rural regions of the southeast states, passing themselves off, oddly enough, as Quakers who also happened to be doctors. As with so many others of his bilking ilk, Brinkley's traveling medicine show existed for the sole purpose not of helping the poor and weak, but of selling patent medicinals that could cure all manner of alleged ills. Before long the young quack Quaker joined forces with a “Dr.” Burke in selling virility tinctures to rural men in need of a bold boost.

By the fall of 1907, Brinkley and his wife relocated to Chicago, and the tricky twosome soon became a trio when their first child, a girl named Wanda Marion Brinkley, was born. At the same heady time, Brinkley realized a lifelong ambition by enrolling in medical school. Unfortunately for the American public and the world at large, Brinkley chose Bennett Medical College, a dicey institution with serious credibility issues. Nonetheless, he was the scholarly sort and by day worked as a student and at night as a telegrapher. A second child, a boy, was soon born, but lived only three days.

Mounting debt soon fractured his marriage. His wife took their daughter and left him, filing for divorce and demanding monetary support. Brinkley complied for a time, but it wasn't long before, in a fit of pique, he tracked them down and absconded with his daughter, taking her over the border into Canada. Rather than have the father of her child risk prison, Brinkley's wife dropped charges against him. They resolved their tiff, and once more settled in as a family in Chicago, where Brinkley continued his schooling.

The Bennett Medical College was known for a curriculum based on the dubiously named “eclectic medicine,” a quasi-medical pursuit reliant on unusual forms of therapies and abnormal treatments. In his studies, Brinkley learned of the effects of glandular extracts on humans, and his findings quickly developed into a lifelong fascination.

Once again owing to debt and other marital issues, plus the addition of a second daughter, Brinkley and his wife separated. It was his third year of school, but he left his studies and chased after her, leaving a smoking trail of debt behind. He tried his hand at practicing medicine, billing himself as an “undergraduate physician,” but met with little success. He ricocheted, family in tow, to St. Louis, Missouri, to resume his schooling, but because of a small mountain of money owed to his previous school, he was unable to obtain his scholastic records.

Poor Brinkley, at his wit's end, obtained an official-looking certificate from the Kansas City Eclectic Medical University—in truth nothing more than a diploma mill—and soon another daughter joined the odd family. He dragged them all to Chicago, where he intended to set up shop as a bona fide medical man. It didn't work out and his wife left him once more, heading home to her kin in North Carolina.

Brinkley drifted to South Carolina and went into business with a like-minded partner by the surname of Crawford. The duo billed themselves as the “Greenville Electro Medic Doctors,” and here is where Brinkley, with past experience as a snake-oil salesman and present know-how as a budding quack, settled into his true calling as shameless self-promoting sham shaman.

The two hucksters, preying on men fearful of losing their virility, injected their patients with a special tincture they called “Salvarsan,” a so-called “electric medicine from Germany.” In truth it was nothing more than colored water. Charging a hefty $25 per dose, they nonetheless quickly built up a steady stream of patients. The shady pair also lived beyond their means, amassing much debt for rent, utilities, clothing, and medicinal supplies. On the verge of discovery as charlatans, they fled in the night and decamped to Memphis, Tennessee.

While there, Brinkley met a young woman named Minnie Jones, herself the daughter of a physician. He wooed her for all of four days, then married her. There was only one hiccup—he was still very much married to Sally! Oops. . . .

After his (second) honeymoon, life began to work against poor Brinkley: He was tossed in the clink for practicing unlicensed medicine and for skipping town and leaving a trail of bad checks in his wake. He ratted on his partner, Crawford, and settled out of court for monetary damages. Just in time for a visit by his first, and only legitimate, wife, Sally, who was unimpressed with her estranged husband's activities and promptly accused John of bigamy. Nearly broke, Brinkley once again tried his hand at practicing medicine, this time on women and children. Luckily for his patients, he soon learned this would not alleviate his faulty financial situation. So he turned to the army, joining the Reserve Medical Corps.

Brinkley's abiding passion throughout these tumultuous years was to complete his medical degree. He eventually paid off the debt he owed to Bennett Medical University, and by the fall of 1914 he was officially sanctioned as an honest-to-goodness medical practitioner in eight states. He quickly landed a job as company doctor for the Swift meat-packing company in Kansas City. While there he stumbled on what became the foundation for his biggest and most dangerous medical discovery. But it would be another few years before he tested it on live subjects. . . .

In the meantime, he filed for divorce from Sally, lying to the court as to her whereabouts, afraid that she might somehow prevent the proceedings. Freed of his marital obligations to her, he legally married Minnie. However, he failed to sit out the six-month waiting period following the divorce.

World War I was raging and the army called its reservists to action. Soon Brinkley found himself on active service. He gave it a paltry two months, during which time he claimed with increasing angst and much lamentation to be too nervous and addled with anxiety to serve. Rather than listen to his bellyaching a moment more, the army discharged Brinkley.

So what does all this have to do with a shady swindler in the Old West? Within months of leaving the Army, Brinkley found a newspaper advertisement placed by the town of Milford, Kansas, stating that it was in need of a medical man. Before long “Doctor” Brinkley found himself in Milford, up to his elbows in the very thing he'd always yearned for—a thriving medical practice. His arrival coincided with the spreading influenza pandemic of 1918, and by accounts of his time there, he was most successful at nursing flu victims back to health. His practice blossomed, and he employed a number of people as assistants.

During his early days in Milford, he was approached by a patient who claimed he was sexually weak—was Brinkley aware of a procedure that might help? He immediately recalled his time at the Swift meat-packing plant, something he had learned there about the powerful glands of billy goats. Brinkley rubbed his palms together as the sound of a ringing cash register filled the dark spaces of his quack mind, for he knew just what to do.

Shortly thereafter he performed a breakthrough operation on the impotent patient, a procedure Brinkley was under no illusion would bring him anything resembling fame and fortune. Still, what could it hurt to try? So he transplanted goat testicles into the man's groin. Yes, you read that correctly—goat testes. And the man paid Brinkley $150 for the pleasure. Though the man did not die, it didn't do him any good either. Not initially, anyway.

Not only was the procedure unproven, but Brinkley surely knew there was no way it could work. Undaunted, Brinkley turned it into a full-blown moneymaking scheme. His clinic business, already brisk, soon thrummed with activity. He upped his rates to $750 per operation, and in no time he was implanting the testicular glands of goats into the bodies of sexually desperate but wealthy men. In the best possible post-operation scenario, the man's body would be able to merely absorb the goat testes. Sometimes it worked; often the patient became sick. None died . . . yet.

“Will it hurt?”